Jadwiga Staniszkis (26 April 1942 – 15 April 2024) was a Polish sociologist and

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

, essayist, a professor at the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...

and the Wyższa Szkoła Biznesu (Higher Business School), a Polish campus of

National-Louis University National Louis University (NLU) is a private university, private nonprofit university with its main campus in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. NLU enrolls undergraduate and graduate students in more than 60 programs across its four colleges. It has lo ...

Biography

Staniszkis was the granddaughter of the interwar politician Witold Teofil Staniszkis who was murdered in the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

in 1941 during the German occupation of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. Jadwiga Staniszkis studied sociology at the Warsaw University Faculty of Philosophy, obtaining a PhD in 1971 ("Patologie struktur organizacyjnych"). In 1978, she completed her

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

in the humanities, in the department of sociology. From 1991, she worked as a university professor. After her graduation, Staniszkis worked at the Department of Sociology at her alma mater. She actively contributed to political life at the university and was dismissed from the university and arrested for seven months for attending the protests of students and intellectuals against the communist government of the

People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

during the

1968 Polish political crisis A series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the ruling Polish United Workers' Party of the Polish People's Republic took place in Poland in March 1968. The crisis led to the suppression of student strikes by security forces ...

. Staniszkis was the author of several books on phenomena of socialism. Her first book about the dialectics of socialist society was translated into Japanese, but the Polish manuscript was confiscated by the secret service (SB) and lost. Her second book on the

Solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...

movement has never been translated to Polish due to controversy, although it was published in French (two years before the 'original' English edition). The fate of her book about the dynamics of transformation in Poland was similar, as it has not been published in Poland. Most of her works have been published since the transformation of the political system in Poland. In 2021, Jadwiga Staniszkis withdrew from public life. In October 2023 her daughter, Joanna, revealed that she was struggling with Alzheimer's disease. She died from complications of the disease on 15 April 2024 at the age of 81.

Awards

In 2004 Staniszkis was awarded the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science, called the "Polish

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

" in Poland. On 31 August 2006, President

Lech Kaczyński Lech Aleksander Kaczyński (; 18 June 194910 April 2010) was a Polish politician who served as the city mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010 in an air crash. The aircraft carrying ...

awarded her the Commander's Cross of the

Order of Polonia Restituta The Order of Polonia Restituta (, ) is a Polish state decoration, state Order (decoration), order established 4 February 1921. It is conferred on both military and civilians as well as on alien (law), foreigners for outstanding achievements in ...

Works

*''Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution'' (1984) *"Forms of Reasoning as Ideology"
''Telos''
66 (Winter 1985–86). New York: Telos Press. *''The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe: The Polish Experience''. Berkeley, California: University of Berkeley Press, 1991. *''The Ontology of Socialism'' (1992) *''Post-communism: Emerging Enigma'' (1999) *"The Epistemologies of Order: An Inquiry Into Genesis, Clashes and Collapse", in J. Koltan (ed.) ''Solidarity and the Crisis of Trust'', Gdansk: European Solidarity Centre, 2016, pp. 95–120 (http://www.ecs.gda.pl/title,pid,1471.html).

References

External links

* *''Conflict over the Future of Eastern Europe: Russian, Hungarian and Polish Globalists'', 7 June 1989 lecture available online vi
C-Span Video Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Staniszkis, Jadwiga 1942 births 2024 deaths Polish sociologists Polish women sociologists Academic staff of the University of Warsaw Commanders of the Order of Polonia Restituta Writers from Warsaw Polish women academics Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Deaths from dementia in Poland